May the People Remember...
A poem to ground us in turbulent times...
We live at the headwaters of a seasonal rivulet now known as Clear Creek. Our earthen seed kiva sits on a forested crest of tan oak, Douglas fir, broad leaf maple, ponderosa pine, black oak, and a few majestic madrone; behind is a steep northern hill we have named “Yaponi Ravine” because that is where the bears live. Yaponi is Maidu/Nisenan for bear, and they are whose land we currently reside. Across the Southwestern hill we call home, bears move back and forth, sometimes leaving their ursine “hobo code” on wooden fences, leaving little scratched messages that inspire our imaginations. “Orchard has tasty fruit; the old dog passed away, the coast is clear…”
Even though an ephemeral wooden fence has sprung up across time-honored seasonal kinship routes, they still move through here, quietly foraging, tending to deep time.
We are not the first nor only inhabitants here. The bear code scratched into this fence holds a visual memory landscape of natural migration, where bears climb out after feasting on pears fallen and corn cobs gleaned, tells a beautiful and ancient story, one begun long, long ago....they are now held in relational songlines woven on this land.
Migration is a natural thing. Borders are irrelevant and manufactured.
This is something I celebrate today. Bears moving on kinship routes and cranes heading north with resounding echoes, tending to deep time diligence of the world in constant seasonal motion.
What I know is true is that this is their home, their land, and we are guests here. They move in songlines across the land, upholding their agreements, and remind us to do the same, however difficult that is in these turbulent times. It is more important than ever that we listen, we remember, we make offerings, we be good neighbors to our more-than-human kin. These bears come to me in dreamtime, and sometimes I awake before Dawn to scribe down what they have shown me. This poem was written in 2021, and I wanted to share it here with you all as the bears begin to emerge with their new springtime cubs to dance the world awake again…..
Who are your more-than-human teachers? Share with us below…
May the People Remember...
Last night, the bear came over the hill from the north
Proudly leading her three cubs for all to see.
It's time to dance the world awake. To renew our bundles, our agreements, the earth of our body. The new year is dawning.
The humans that are here now forget how to listen,
To accept the invitation.
Mama Bear comes around night after night.
Sadly, most humans have forgotten, and stay inside to sit under an artificial glow.
She becomes angry, tearing down barn walls and breaking down doors.
Taking what was supposed to be given.
Only a few remember to fast, to feast, to sing
Oh, the generosity the bears continue to extend!
In a world so vastly changed by brokenhearted humans.
When we forget to feast, they come and take.
Saddened by the absence of reciprocity.
The land sang her agreements to us long ago.
Many come here not knowing the umbilicus of origin underfoot.
Do we have the courage to remember?
The land gave us Ceremony.
Everyone had a place in the circle.
These ceremonies are written in the seeds, and the stars and the waters, and the Earth….
They are held in your heart, beating fiercely in promise to uphold the agreements to feed the Sacred hunger of Time.
Some still remember. Their voices grow as the lost ones struggle.
The earth offers us her steadiness.
Something begins to grow again from the dry and dusty soil.
Grandmother granite, grant us the strength, the courage to remember.
Lend us your mineral memory.
Bones of the earth, bones of our body, bones of our ancestors.
To lay down bundles of mugwort and acorn, salmon and berries.
I am waiting for the dreams that bring the songs that have been forgotten…
Hidden deep into the hearts of the ancestors, buried deep into the folds of spirited hearts out of protection for the sacred.
Those ancestors in the topography of stone that is as familiar as my children's faces. The ancestor's song arrives in the birds cackling, the wind, the dreams, and the rivers echo across the stones.
Songs that nearly lost their roots in this world when the seeds were no longer planted because the land lay scorched and poisoned, and the people's minds and hearts were disturbed by the death of that most treasured to them.
The trees still sing those songs.
The earth remembers.
The people will remember.
I wait for the ancient grandmothers in the Dreamtime cornfield, and we sing the honored
songs that breathe life into each grain, each seed pulsating the vibration of life that is
Immemorial.
The old ones whisper to me in that space between waking and sleeping that we must
nourish the sacred, thus the sacred will nourish us.
I awake and long to remember these forgotten songs. I sing them in my dreams,
but cannot recall them upon waking.
My eyes cry the tears that the sky withholds. Only the Earth has the capacity to
hold me gently in her arms
and draw from me my grief-ridden poison and turn it into rich
Compost.
The earth is made new again inside my heart.
Rich earthy loam from which the dreams of my ancestors unfurl into shiny speckled beans and smiles and prayers from the lips of my grandchildren who know no hunger.
Here we are, between worlds, where spirits struggle with carrying ancient prayer bundles amongst these modern people who have let the sacred starve.
I am here with the sun-parched bones of tens of thousands of buffalo who were never given the proper offerings to allow their spirits to journey home to the sky-world.
I am here alongside the thousands of children whose spirits were broken by the rigid and cold walls of the strange schools and itchy tight wool clothing which attempted to strangle out their deep knowing of who they were and how to feed the Tapestry of Time.
The earth held them close until we could hold them too. They still live inside our blood and bones, waiting to be birthed again into loving arms. They are coming home to us.
I am here holding the renewed speckled corn that went dormant while being hidden deep within the folds of the grandmothers’ medicine bundles that were nearly forgotten inside the cold shelves of the museum after she passed away from illness that plagued the whole village that winter long ago. The seeds are coming home to us. They will wash our hearts clean of the losses ungrieved, the ceremonies undone.
We will feast once again.
I am here with hope in my heart to plant the corn under the full pink moon in the land of the Acorn people.
The suppressed songs of the earth seep their way into the cracked and earthy vessels of our hearts...
Our lips know the songs that fed our ancestors in both body and spirit.
She is fed once again.
Under this pink round moon, where the Bear relatives reassure us that she will return, season after season, continuing to invite us in.
May we have the courage to accept the invitation.
To remember.
i live in northern alberta and between that and the changing climate the weather is inherently unstable at this season… i realized this year that the coming and going of the birds and the colour of the jackrabbits is a more reliable marker of time and cycle than the snow on the ground or the air temperature
The feasting part really spoke to me. Thank you for these rememberings, what a gift to read.